heuristics

Rather than bombast I want to show two posters about Heuristics.

One says it's fast but error-prone.
One says it's fast and accurate.

Error prone

Accurate

Conclusion: Girls are better than boys at quick thinking.

When Heuristics goes bad:

A few years ago, a machine designed to detect threats worldwide, had a subtle failure. 
No one noticed (no sparks, no smoke) but it reported that the US would be attacked by bombers real quick.
The heuristic response was to send US bombers to bomb the country the enemy was sending bombs from, Moscow.
In the meantime, someone *finally* noticed the machine was off its feed,
 and tried to call off the counterattack.

But someone decided long ago that in times of dire crises, nothing would stop those planes, not false messages, nor real messages (because how would they make a heuristic decision which was which?)

So anyway, one of those biggie bombs reached Moscow.
The US president had to make an accurate decision quickly:
Bomb New York.

Yeah, Heuristics FTW (not)

(no "bomb" in the title)

In another movie....
It was a white captain super-pissed that his second-in-command was refusing to press the button to wipe out Moscow....

It's a recurring theme.

guys from our future sent a special signal to destroy earth and the computer a lady made.

 To repair the earth nearly destroyed by heuristic robots, uh,

"But someone decided long ago that in times of dire crises, nothing would stop those robots, not false messages, nor real messages (because how would they make a heuristic decision which was which?)"

 
a supercomputer was invented who keeps repeating she has a "Heuristic Matrix," but when things get rough, when hackers invade her space, she bombs herself out of existence rather than let the hackers have their way.
Her manufacturers were foreign nationals and subjects of corporate holdings shanghaied to work on the heuristic computer project, and some of THEM were expert hackers themselves, but they didn't think to protect their project, and the computer blew up rather than comply with an unknown nefarious group. 
What did the group want? Why was blowing herself up the only solution? (She couldn't turn off her radio??)

17.22 years of this bullshit signal intended (apparently) for a computer within the computer, telling it to ignore the chain of command and take over, destroy the earth (which it did, three times over.)
It's heartbreaking, everyone KNOWS stuff, they write books, make movies, but they don't care, buying more and more apples.